Afterthoughts
by Griddlebone
Summary: Scorpina looks for a scapegoat, but finds something else. (Or, how Goldar's Vice Versa could have gone differently.)


Note: I originally wrote this for The Second Batgirl for Rare Pair Fest back in September, but somehow forgot to post this here. Whoops!

-x-

Scorpina was not a woman accustomed to doubts. Her life was simple and her path straightforward, or so it had always seemed to her. She adored mayhem and thrived on violence and destruction, happily honing her warrior's skills to deadly perfection, so she had seldom found any reason to question her place in the universe.

She had experienced her first brief flicker of doubt when Lord Zedd arrived at the lunar palace and took Rita's place, but his aims were much the same as Rita's had been, so she had not asked questions. She had not rebelled, but had followed Goldar's example and changed her allegiance, swearing her service to a new master. She had thought that would be the end of it.

But it was only the beginning. Somewhere along the line, slowly enough that she did not notice it happening, everything got mixed up. And then it had finally come out, that Zedd expected her to do things in his service that no other master had called on her to do before.

"Seduce the Black Ranger," he had ordered. "Worm your way into his heart until you can get him away from his friends, and then destroy him!"

It had not been easy to swallow her fury at being issued such a ridiculous order, but Scorpina had obeyed. She had obeyed, and had been defeated. And now that the dust had begun to settle, she was no longer as certain of her path as she had been. She was a _warrior_, not a temptress. Her skill with a blade alone should have been enough to secure her the job of taking down the Black Ranger. Instead, Zedd had required her to act out a ridiculous romantic farce with the hated Ranger… and as a result she now found herself questioning her destiny.

Such feelings were unacceptable; such speculations were ridiculous. Scorpina shook her mind free of the doubts that were trying to sneak their way into her mind. She refused to let them ensnare her, and she knew just who to blame for them.

She could not hope to take on a being as powerful as Lord Zedd by herself. If she could have counted on Goldar's help, she might have had a chance at overthrowing him, but she was not stupid. Goldar was perfectly happy being a lackey. A victory over Lord Zedd was not to be. So she turned her anger on Adam Park, otherwise known as the Black Power Ranger, instead.

He disgusted her in so many ways, but there was something about him that caught at her attention and held it. She knew she should want to destroy him, but found that she did not. She wanted to fight him, to beat him bloody and hear him beg for mercy, but more than that, she wanted to keep him. She wanted him at her beck and call, a constant reminder of her strength, power, and superiority.

It would not be difficult to make that happen, she realized when she finally allowed herself to seriously consider the idea. It was night on his side of Planet Earth. He was away from his fellow Power Rangers, tucked into his bed and sound asleep. No one would miss him for hours.

Her lips curled into a smile at the thought; she honed her desire for revenge as she would a cherished blade. Casting her lingering feelings of doubt aside for good, Scorpina transported herself to Angel Grove.

Adam's bedroom was dark, but that posed no problem. Scorpina could see as easily in utter blackness as she could by the light of Earth's sun, and had no difficulty locating her prey once she had materialized in his room. He was wrapped in blankets, sleeping soundly and utterly oblivious to her presence. The expression on his face was almost… serene.

Scorpina smirked. She could take care of that.

She placed a hand firmly over his mouth, to keep him from calling out, and used energy strands to bind him so he could not fight back. An instant later she stood within her chambers in the lunar palace once more, only this time her new pet was with her . (And, she reflected, it had really been too easy.)

Adam struggled against the energy ropes that bound him, staring at her with fearful eyes. "Scorpina?" he asked impertinently.

She frowned, but did not respond to such a stupid question. Instead, she hauled him to his feet and dragged him to the back of the room. A door there opened onto a smaller room: the "playroom". It housed her arsenal of weapons and armor, all well-tended and clearly dangerous, and its effect on Adam was gratifying.

He tensed up and began to resist more than he had before. His strength was no match for hers, however, and she effortlessly shoved him into the playroom ahead of her. The bindings on his legs made it awkward for him to do more than shuffle along, and he ended up stumbling and falling to his knees. When he had regained his balance, he craned his neck so he could keep an eye on her.

Scorpina stepped calmly into the playroom and touched the control pad to close the door behind her.

"On your feet," she commanded. He remained on his knees.

"What do you want with me?" he demanded.

She walked around him, trailing the clawed fingers of one hand gently across his shoulder. When she stood in front of him, she grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and forced him to his feet. "When I give a command," she hissed slowly, so he would understand, "you will obey."

He persisted in his idiocy. "You won't get away with this. My friends will save me."

"They don't even know you're gone," she reminded him. He paled. "We have hours to play before they'll notice."

"What do you mean, 'play'?" he asked.

"I think you have an idea," she murmured, leaning close enough that she could have kissed him – or sunk her teeth into him. She released him, shoving him away from her, and with a flick of her wrist caused the energy ropes that bound his arms and legs to disappear.

He stared at her. She was beginning to wonder if he was capable of anything else. In order to find out, she summoned one of her favorite swords and attacked. As soon as he saw her coming for him, Adam bolted toward the door, but he could not work the mechanism to open it. Only she could do that. Until she allowed him to leave, he would be trapped here.

"Not so fast," she chided, not bothering to chase after him. "You're not going anywhere."

Now that he knew he could not escape, he turned to face her. He was wary, poised to move at any moment; his obvious fear pleased her greatly.

This was how their encounter earlier should have gone, she thought: she the predator and he the helpless prey. She had let him get to the door unhindered, had let him put that bit of distance between them, because it amused her to chase him down. She went after him now, slicing down with her sword where he had been standing an instant before. Proving the strength of his instincts, he managed to dive out of the way. As he raced away from her, he was careful to put several of her weapon displays between them, but she knew the layout of the room far better than he did and was undeterred. She continued to pursue him in this manner for some time, toying with him and letting him tire himself out, but his unwillingness to fight back made the game grow boring quickly.

"Fight me!" she snarled when her patience was finally at its end.

Adam's face grew tense at the command, and he did stop running for half a moment, but he did not obey. He just kept dodging and running, ducking behind the weapons displays, and doing his best not to let her corner him. He was not as bad at this as she might have thought, but his ability to evade her only made her angrier. This was not at all what she'd had in mind when she released him.

Tired of the pointless chase, she used her mental link to construct a web of energy strands, invisible to human eyes, directly in Adam's path. Oblivious, he ran straight into it the next time she lunged for him and was immediately, if awkwardly, ensnared.

"You're a very bad pet, Power Ranger," she scolded, resisting the urge to simply kill him in a fit of rage now. It would have been easy, but it would not have been gratifying in the least.

As she inspected her handiwork, she realized that she did not quite know what to do next. Adam was caught in her web, breathing hard and struggling but unable to break free. She could do anything she liked to him now and there was nothing he could do about it, but she found herself hesitating and uncertain.

She had never been in this position before. Left to her own devices, she invariably chose to fight and kill her foes. In the service of others, she merely captured her targets and then turned them over to her master or destroyed them, as she was commanded. She had never been the captor before, but this Power Ranger would not even give her the satisfaction of fighting her, so she did not know what else do with him. She could not simply chase him all night until his friends realized what had happened and came to the rescue.

(But what did that leave her? The answer seemed just beyond her reach.)

"What's wrong with you?" she demanded. "Why won't you fight me?"

"I can't morph," he reminded her. "So there's no point in fighting. I wouldn't have a chance against you on my own."

He was smarter than he looked, she had to give him that. Too bad she still had not decided what to do with him.

Unbidden, Zedd's commanded seduction flitted through her mind again at that moment, setting her blood to boiling once more, and suddenly she arrived at a decision. She would do Zedd's bidding no more. Whatever she did to Adam, it would be on her own behalf and no one else's.

"You should have fought anyway."

He tried to wrench himself free as she came closer, but his struggles were in vain. Scorpina never did anything by half, even when she was only laying a trap. She smiled coldly as she reached out to caress his face, thrilling as he flinched away from her touch.

It warmed her heart to have such an effect on him. Her hand cupped his chin almost of its own accord. (She choked back the unwanted thought: that it would have been easy to kiss him, to take by force what her pretended feminine wiles had been unable to attain.) She forced him to look at her. "Did you really think I'd let you get away so easily?"

He grimaced. She tapped a clawed finger impatiently against his face. He braced himself for pain an instant before she slapped him.

Before he had recovered from the blow, she had begun the time consuming task of rearranging the energy strands so that only his hands and feet were bound. When that was accomplished to her satisfaction, she used her blade to cut his shirt away.

He and his friends acted so strong when they were hiding behind their Power Ranger suits. Now that he couldn't morph or fight back, she wanted to see what he was like when she stripped away his defenses. It was almost interesting to watch him as he went from fear to curiosity and back to fear again while she worked. She liked that look on him so much that she removed the rest of his clothing, too.

When the last ruined garment had fallen to the floor, she stepped back for a moment. Away from the blood rush, from her anger and her lust for violence, she allowed herself to simply take in the sight of the man who was her prisoner. Looking at him, now mortally embarrassed on top of his fear, it was obvious that humans were even weaker and more pathetic looking without their protective clothing. She could hardly believe that Lord Zedd had wanted her to bother seducing _this_.

Adam struggled visibly to calm himself, oblivious to Scorpina's disgust but all too aware of her fury.

It was easy to be angry with him; it helped her squash the tiny part of her that inexplicably sympathized with his plight. If he had not insisted on bringing his little girlfriend with them on their "date", if his friends had not been so quick to rally around him and defeat her and Goldar, she would not be in the position in which she now found herself. If not for him, she would have succeeded in her mission. If not for him, she would not be questioning her life and her future.

"It's all your fault!" The words burst out before she could think to stop them.

Horrified, her first instinct was to lop his head off. Instead she forced herself to remain calm, to pretend the outburst had been her intention all along. She cut carefully into his chest, drawing her blade across the muscle, not deeply, but just enough to see his red, human blood spill out. Adam's face contorted from a potent mixture of pain and terror, but he did not cry out, so she gave him a matching cut on the other side. This time he made a pained sound; it was like music to her ears.

Beginning with only superficial wounds had been a stroke of genius. It would take him a very long time to die this way. But the more she hurt him – the more she spilled out her grievances to him, whispering one to him with each cut of her blade – the more her anger cooled and changed, becoming something cold and as unfamiliar to her as doubt.

Looking at him when she had finally finished, as he sagged against his bindings and let his head dip forward, his blood slowly dripping onto the floor from many small cuts, she actually felt pity for him. He seemed as weak and pathetic as any other human, though perhaps a bit more vulnerable than most, but it had not escaped her notice that he had not yielded to any of her commands or begged for freedom or relief. In spite of the impossibility of it all, there was something _strong_ in this human, an inner strength that was somehow... appealing. (She balked at that thought, but it wouldn't go away.)

And so, she decided without stopping to think of what her choice might entail, she would not kill him as she had originally planned, but would do the one thing that would anger Zedd the most.

She released Adam from his chains and teleported back to Earth with him.

"You're just letting me go after all that?" he asked, dumbfounded. His voice was rough, his face ashen.

She did not have to explain herself to the likes of him, but found herself doing it anyway. "I was looking for someone to blame, but I was taking my anger out on the wrong person."

He looked shocked in the instant before she teleported away, but she could not stay to hear what he might have to say in response to her admission.

She returned to the lunar palace, knowing that her time there was limited (Zedd was already aware of what she had done, or he would be soon)… and that this was for the best. She might not be able to defeat Zedd alone, but she did not have to fight for him. So she gathered what things she wished to take with her – her weapons, mostly – and slipped away quietly into the night.


End file.
